Talk:Piper Alpha

Energy

"Some accounts say that the explosion and fire released the equivalent energy of 1/5 of the U.K.'s annual energy consumption." Let's think about this. The suggestion is that on one platform (of many) there was stored enough fuel at one time to supply the UK for not just with oil and gas for 2-3 months, but to cover the coal, nuclear and imported energy as well. I thnks we should only put this in with a good source. Rich Farmbrough 21:54, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I have seen this statement used by the Chemical Engineering department of UCL, and it doesnt say that that amount of energy was STORED on piper alpha - it says that much energy was RELEASED. The reason for this is that dispite the fire oil and Gas continued to be pumped at the two platforms which piped through Piper as the health and safety management system failed to delegate responsibility for matters affecting h&s far enough down the organisation in order that the platform supervisors could switch off their pumps, and remember that the fire burnt for a good while after the event, so this statement could well be true.

If you read the stuff from above, it seems like the rate of use was a significant amount. But it's not like it burned for all that long, so I too doubt the absolute amount of energy consumed by the fire was anything close to what Britain uses in a year. TastyCakes (talk) 17:31, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Whatever it was, it cost the UK taxpayer around £9-billion in lost tax revenue in the first year after its loss, making it at the time the most costly man-made disaster in history.

Poor article

I am surprised by the content of the article. Lets clean it up.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.42.8.253 (talk • contribs) 18:30, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

From the ashes...

The remains of the Piper Alpha were remanufactured into the launch platform of the Sea Launch spacecraft launch service (named Ocean Odyssey). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Launch. 03:55, 15 February 2006 (UTC) —User:65.27.159.71

There are several conflicting points between the Ocean Odyssey and Piper Alpha articles, which would seem to preclude the two from being the same rig. —Fleminra 05:29, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The claim that the Piper was remanufactured into the Sea Launch system is totally false. Firstly, the Piper was a fixed platform (NOT a rig) and the Ocean Odessy is an adapted mobile semi submersible drilling rig. Secondly, the remains of the Piper jacket were toppled after the disaster; the only part that was recovered was the accomodation block. The Ocean Odessy was involved in a shallow gas blowout a few years later in the North Sea though- perhaps that is the source of the confusion? 194.159.125.163 08:24, 24 February 2007 (UTC)Nic, Claymore Drilling Engineer

Claim regarding weather conditions

"battle 80mph winds and 70-foot waves." This was in the early July in the North Sea. This is not normally the stormy time of the year, so it doesn't seem plausible that the worst conditions one might find in a typical year (if one would even see these conditions in a normal year) would be found in the dry season (see Cfb (winter wetter than summer)) and near the beginning of the North Atlantic Hurricane season. This type of weather would normally occur between October and February. That being said, even if these meteorological conditions did occur in early July, it stands to reason that they could wait at least a few hours for the weather to become somewhat calmer. After all, they waited for the famous Red Adair to arrive to do the job properly, not to do the job as quickly as possible. The official reports (in the External links) report winds of 10-15 knots, so this is likely the conditions that were encountered by Red Adair. If these conditions did actually occur, is there a source from a meteorological agency or from an official government report? I respect the late Red Adair's skills in fighting fires and capping hydrocarbon leaks, but I hope that we could find a source other than him on meteorological conditions (if he was indeed the source). Thanks Ufwuct 03:20, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Survivors (and victims)

It doesn't mention anywhere how many workers on the platform survived, only how many died... M.nelson (talk) 23:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I was surprised how difficult it was even to find a list of the victims on the Internet. I'm not sure where or how such information should be referenced, or if there is a style guide for victim (and survivor) lists on Wikipedia. I have not found a definitive list of victims (or survivors), even now. Here are a couple of victim lists I found:
http://www.ukoilandgaschaplaincy.com/images/Piper%20Service.pdf
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guinnessgurl/2641855564/
Cherwell1 (talk) 19:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't this clearly establish that any list isn't notable? --BozMo talk 18:14, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

No, it shows that this event happened at a time when the Internet did not exist as we know it; any list of Piper casualties was freely available as hard copy. Samesawed (talk) 15:11, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Here is a list of all those who died published on the 25th anniversary http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/piper-alpha-disaster-list-167-2029788 62.252.214.21 (talk) 22:10, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

UK Gas consumption

I removed : "Gas bursts out at ½ a tonne per second, equivalent to the entire domestic consumption of gas in the UK."

which is total nonsense. Gas comsumption is around 102 Billion cubic metres a year. Which is around 3000 cubic metres / second. Alot more than half a tonne.

Mcmadkat (talk) 11:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

If you assume it's 100% methane (which isn't completely unreasonable) 3000 cubic meters/second at standard pressure and temperature is about 2151 kg/second, or 2.1 tonnes per second. So if the 1/2 tonne statistic is correct (I'm not sure why they would give it in mass rather than volume) then the fire burned about a quarter of the gas all Britain typically did, or about 700m^3/s... A lot more than I would have thought. Also, what was the gas consumption in 1988? I should think it was lower then... TastyCakes (talk) 16:56, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

You cannot assume that all the gas was methane. The condensate, central to the disaster was actually propane. The report concluded that the likely cause of the first explosion was the release of as small amount of condensate (mainly propane) though an unsecured blind flange in Module C where a pressure safety relief valve had been removed as part of maintenance on the standby condensate pump. Samesawed (talk) 16:01, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

What brought Piper down were jet fires from the broken gas risers: two import risers (from Tartan and Claymore) and one export riser (to MCP-01). Heavier molecules had already been removed from all these streams and reinjected into the exported oil. So, to approximate the gas composition to pure methane is sufficiently accurate. Note that the initial explosion was indeed from a condensate system, which separated heavier gas components and reinjected them in the oil stream, and this was followed by oil fires in the adjacent module; but these were small events in themselves: they did cause the disaster but only because they triggered the much larger gas riser fires.

In terms of comparing the energy involved in the accident to the UK consumption, I have left this statement: "It was estimated that the fires had produced flames with a height of about 200 metres and a peak rate of about 100 gigawatts, or three times the total power consumption of the United Kingdom." backed by the Institution of Chemical Engineers: lpb261_pg03.pdf (icheme.org) -- JudeFawley (talk) 04:40, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Very surprising

I was recruited into the oil industry as an explosion specialist straight after Piper Alpha and worked on the explosion for years. Never have I heard it referred to as "the" Piper Alpha, always just "Piper Alpha". In general proper names do not take "the". So I am changing the opening paragraph to remove the "the".--BozMo talk 07:56, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, you need to watch "Fire in the Night" a documentary on the Piper Alpha incident in which you will hear people actually involved in the incident from survivors to Nimrod pilots to the captain of the 'Sandhaven' who talk of "the Piper" and "the Piper Alpha". Samesawed (talk) 14:20, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Picture

Are there no free images of Piper Alpha? TastyCakes (talk) 18:34, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction

I think there is a major contradiction in this article. It might have something to do with differing opinions on what happened. There is, however, no way of verifying whether this is because of different sources. Contrast the Explosion section:

The shift supervisor was not able to complete the maintenance work in the shift and so he wrote handover notes and gave them to the contractor. The contractor did not read them and signed off the permit for the work.

with the information in the Timeline:

As he found the on-duty custodian busy, the engineer neglects to inform him of the condition of Pump A. Instead he places the permit in the control centre and leaves.

--Bjkoning (talk) 11:52, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Map

Could we put a map of the north sea showing piper alpha's location? I see the coordinates are already there... I just don't know of a map that it would appear on or really how to do that map overlay thing... TastyCakes (talk) 15:41, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Fines

The article does not mention any fines or punitive damages imposed on Occidental after the accident. Google finds unreliable blog-like claims from 2 to 20 billion US dollars. If anyone has well-sourced details on the fines, please could they add them? -84user (talk) 12:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Number of survivors

Not sure about "59 survivors". Reference 4 "The night the sea caught fire: Remembering Piper Alpha" quotes this number, but Reference 5 "Remembering Piper Alpha disaster" says 62 and reference 15 "Twenty years on, Piper Alpha survivor tells of fleeing fireball" has 61 survivors. These are all news articles so they should be equally reliable - 05:14 am, 1st February 2011 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.174.5.230 (talk • contribs) 05:16, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Does any one have access to a digital version of the public inquiry?

When I was a student at Imperial College London, I remember finding the public inquiry of Piper Alpha in the main college library in South Kensington. It is very detailed and I think the order of events in this wikipedia article is taken from this. If I remember rightly it stated the cause of death of everyone who died. Its a great pity this public inquiry is not truly public and available on the internet. Does any one have access to a copy? 62.252.214.21 (talk) 22:15, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

No, at least I added a clear reference to the report. Somehow this seem to have been lacking here? Piper2013 (talk) 06:51, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

HSE appears to have placed a digital copy of the inquiry online in late 2018. Its available at https://www.hse.gov.uk/offshore/piper-alpha-disaster-public-inquiry.htm and should provide invaluable to anyone wishing to expand the article with reliable content. I've added a link in the external links section of the article Thx811 (talk) 19:31, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

A bit late, but you have to remember that there was no real internet at that time. It was public, the report was publicly available, but primarily as hard copy. It was, eventually, made available on the internet. Samesawed (talk) 15:06, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

106 recommendations online?

Are they available online? It would be nice if the article included a link to them. Piper2013 (talk) 07:46, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The Public Inquiry into the Piper Alpha Disaster: Volume 2 - HSE Chapter 23: Recommendations — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samesawed (talk • contribs) 15:27, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Images

I added the image from Commons of the stained-glass window to the Legacy section. It's a bit overpowering - I could not work out how to make it any smaller. But maybe what this article needs is a strong image of the platform in the info box, or at least an example of a similar platform in the main body? There are only images of memorials at Commons and I very much doubt there will be a free image available of the platform itself. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:25, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

No of survivors

The section Timeline of the incident states: At the time of the disaster 226 people were on the platform; 165 died and 61 survived.

But section Aftermath states: The largest number of survivors (37 out of 59) were recovered by the Fast Rescue Craft MV Silver Pit

-B kimmel (talk) 12:39, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

The source for the first statement is the Cullen Report (Vol 2, Appendix H, p463) and you can't get much more WP:RS than that. The second statement, as far as I can see, is unsourced. So I'd suggest removing that "(37 out of 59)", as this would not affect the claim about the MV Silver Pit, even though it's still unsourced. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:06, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

One possible source for the 167 figure is the Glasgow Herald report of May 5th, 1989 (Page 6) "Crew Braved Flames to Save More than 30" which clearly states 167 people died[1]. The problem is that the figure includes two crewmen from the Sandhaven; they are the seamen in this list from the Daily Record: Brian Philip BATCHELOR and Malcolm John STOREY. The number of deaths which resulted from the Piper Alpha disaster WAS 167, but two of them were not from the Piper Alpha.Kuitan (talk) 18:56, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Piper Alpha/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

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For such a huge diasaster, this page is very poor. What is there needs a good copyedit, but at least it's there. The biggest problem is what's not there. The article makes no mention of the methods of investigation used, which were highly unusual due to the lack of an oil platform to examine (only part of it was ever recovered, only near the end of the investigation, and only in an attempt to recover bodys, not get investigative material), so instead the investigation focused almost entirely on blueprints and eyewitnesses, normally only part of the selection of availible references. It tells us what the investigation worked out happened, but not how it reached it's conclusions. Also a lack of references and info about safety improvements made as a result. Not even a picture. Blood red sandman 19:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC) I'm disappointed by this article. Not only did 167 people die, but it revolutionised offshore safety in the UKCS, and arguably across the world. It also lead to the foundation of the OILC, an independent trade union for the UK Offshore Industry. The biggest failing is that it doesn't appear to take any information from the wide ranging public inquiry into the disaster, chaired by Lord Cullen. The Cullen report doesn't even appear as a reference, which is a really shocking ommission! 194.159.125.163 08:39, 24 February 2007 (UTC)Nic, Claymore Drilling Engineer == Still needs work == The article still fails to convey the true horror of the event to a reader, for instance at peak point with men still trying to escape the platform the fire was burning approximately twice the UK consumption rate of gas. The massive impact it had on how the oil industry worldwide went on to change oil platform design and onboard operations is also not clear in the article.

Last edited at 16:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 03:04, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Italics

Should "Piper Alpha" be in italics or not? The name is italicised in some parts of the article but is not in other parts. --TBM10 (talk) 15:46, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I realize this message is 6 years old, but here is what I think.

While ship names (and by extension, mobile plaforms) should be written in italics, fixed platform names should not. So Deepwater Horizon but Piper Alpha.@

Grammarly, blog, Chicago--JudeFawley (talk) 04:37, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

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Sections added to Timeline of events

The section originally headed as Timeline of Events was extremely long. I have done my best to divide it into reasonable sections. Any further adjustments, alterations, etc. will be appreciated. I think this division makes it much easier both to read and to edit. Best, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 04:28, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Add more details?

Could we add more details about the collapse? I found this: https://www.hse.gov.uk/offshore/piper-alpha-public-inquiry-volume1.pdf. I read it (The discussion abount the collapse of the oil platform is on pages 145-147 ) and it seems that the collapse of the Piper Alpha platform seems complex and long. Is this reliable?

PS: several acronyms show up, like LQW, AAW and ERQ. LQW means Living quarters west , AAW means additional accomodation west and ERQ means East replacement quarters. --The Space Enthusiast (talk) 06:11, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

The linked PDF is the report of the official Public Enquiry into the disaster led by Lord Cullen so yes, it is reliable.

Undocumented/Incorrect Claim

The article contained a claim regarding the tie-in platforms continuing production and unnamed workers saying they didn't have permission to shut that in.

This claim was linked to a now-defunct webpage, which was still available via the Wayback machine, but which in turn cited... the wikipedia article, and the official inquest. The link to the inquest provided there is now broken although it's possible to find it on the Wayback Machine: [2]https://web.archive.org/web/20021227221456/http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/Appendix%20to%20Piper%20Alpha.html

That document doesn't make the claim either. So I simply removed that sentence and the footnote. 162.205.142.97 (talk) 20:40, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

There are many places where you can find confirmation of the claim that "the tie-in platforms continuing production and unnamed workers saying they didn't have permission to shut that in" (sic). For example, here. It is also found in a talk given by Brian Appleton, one of Lord Cullen's Technical Advisers to the Enquiry), that is available on YouTube starting at about 18 minutes and 30 seconds in. It is also in the Cullen Report, itself. Corotletha (talk) 16:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Having read through the relevant sections of the Cullen Report (esp. Chapter 7), the behaviour of the Offshore installation managers (OIMs) on Tartan and Claymore, you get a much more nuanced understanding of the situation. One thing that comes through is that nobody really understood what was happening; there was no training at any level, right up to OIM on what to do if there was a catastrophic failure of one part of the system (in this case Piper, in the Piper-Tartan-Claymore system) and there was no proper understanding of how what had happened on Piper, led to a catastrophic and total failure of an important communication; it seems that if one part of the system went down, it all went down, which made the decision to shut down the gas flow from Tartan and Claymore, more difficult. Cullen, very clearly says that the OIM had the authority to shut off the flow but that the Claymore. However, there was a point during a conversation (Cullen §7.39) between the Claymore OIM and one of his onshore managers, when it was suggested to the OIM that he ask the Onshore manager what to do, having already twice failed to get the OIM to shut down previously. The report clearly states that the onshore manager expressed anger and frustration that Claymore had not already shut down operations, and made sure that Texaco call up Tartan to close their systems, too. There is much more to this, explaining why the OIMs acted as they did, the failure to understand the severity of the situation; the assumption that it was on the same scale as a previous incident on Piper (1994) and so on. I don't know how this could be put in the article; I would leave it to someone who has a better understanding of what is needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Corotletha (talk • contribs) 17:01, 27 May 2023 (UTC)